Thursday, May 17, 2007

A Brief History of Video Games: The Arcade Years: Part I

Once upon a time, there were no video games. I realize this comes as a great shock to many of you, but it is sadly true. Medieval peasants did not get phat lewt. Members of the court of Queen Elizabeth did not shout Ding! King Tut may have been cool, but he did not roxor.

So what did nerds do back then, in the proverbial (and literal) Dark Ages? I have no idea. It probably involved hard labor and dying from disease. But I digress.

There is debate over what was the first true video game. Some say it was OXO (or Noughts and Crosses), which was made in 1952. Some insist it was Tennis for Two, built in 1958. However, I have no knowledge of these games, so I we will leap ahead to 1972, when Pong was introduced.

The first time I saw a Pong game was in the mid-70s, when we went to a Round Table Pizza after a Youth Soccer Game. I am pretty sure we lost, as we sucked hard. However, the pain of our defeat was soon forgotten when somebody found a cocktail Pong machine in the back.